The present invention relates to an automatic machine for making a beverage from a liquid such as hot water and a base material such as freshly ground coffee. A process and related automatic machine for making coffee in measured quantities are disclosed respectively in U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,976 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,565,641. Coffee is made in accordance with this known arrangement by the following sequence. Measured amounts of ground coffee and hot water are introduced at atmospheric pressure into an infusion chamber equipped at the bottom thereof with an appropriate filter. Air is introduced into the infusion chamber through the bottom filter to agitate the water/coffee mixture. Brewed coffee is extracted through the filter at the bottom of the infusion chamber and is funneled to a dispensing area. Particularly, during certain phases of the operating cycle of the machine, the bottom of the infusion chamber is hermetically sealed to a lower cylinder in which slides a piston. When the piston is moved upwardly toward the bottom of the infusion chamber, the piston introduces air through the filter into the infusion chamber. When the piston is caused to move downwardly the beverage is brewed and extracted through the filter due to depressurization.
Such a solution is advantageous since it allows coffee having particularly good organoleptic properties to be made in a short period of time. Such a solution however does have certain inconveniences. Particularly, the coffee extracted from the infusion chamber must be passed to the dispensing area by the force of gravity since the coffee receives no positive pressure from the sliding movement of the piston. Therefore, this known machine provides limitations as to the relative positioning of the various components, since the entire infusion complex must be placed above the dispensing area which, for reasons of practicality and standardization, also must be located a certain minimum height above the floor. This of course also affects the positioning of the other basic components of the machine, for example mechanisms necessary to store and funnel the ground coffee to the infusion chamber, and possibly also to grind the coffee, and the water feed and/or heating mechanisms, unless they are designed in a complicated and uneconomical manner. Thus, this known coffee machine is undesirably cumbersome and/or insufficiently rational with regard to the relative positioning of its various components.